Last week I received an email from Practical Ecommerce publisher Kerry Murdock regarding some changes he was making to the magazine, specfically as it pertained to the way in which it would be published going forward. For me, the news came as a mixed bag of good and bad.
The good news is that PE now has a dynamic, newly redesigned and developed Web site. It's built to function specifically as an online magazine and contains a number of social networking elements (shared user profiles, comments, ratings, reviews, etc).
The bad news (for me at least) is that the July/August edition will be the last one published in print form.
Kerry was willing to sit for an interview, which is available as a podcast. (It's about 29 minutes long, but is well worth the investment of time. Plus, it's tagged so you can pick and choose the sections you'd like to listen to.)
This is a direction that media is heading, especially as it pertains to technical publications, according to Kerry. The reason, advertisers are moving away from print and putting their dollars online.
It's common knowledge that newspapers are feeling severe pain as a result of this shift. In their book, Get Content, Get Customers, authors Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett point out that "newspaper readership has plummeted between 1970 and 2006...only 35% of 18-34 year-olds are daily newspaper readers." The numbers don't skew much higher until you get to, well, people my age, 50+ and even higher.
A few months ago one of my must-read magazines, Business 2.0, ceased publication. (Or, rather, Time Inc, owners of the magazine ceased its publication.) The reason was the same as that conjectured by Kerry -- advertising revenues had declined to the degree the magazine could not sustain itself.
What does this portend for other technology publications? Will we see niche magazines such as Blogger and Podcaster or Search Marketing Standard being delivered in digital form? What do you think the future holds?
Once again, let me encourage you to take a few minutes and listen to the interview. Kerry has a lot to say that's of value, not only to Practical Ecommerce subscribers, but to all those of us interested in content marketing and digital publication.
I can completely understand their logic in moving away from print - I find I am getting most of my info on line now. Having said that, there is nothing like breaking the spine of a good book or thumbing through a good magazine and, while in an ever reducing quantity, I still enjoy picking up hard copies of both.
Posted by: Keli Whidden | July 22, 2008 at 01:07 PM